Lancashire: When is a lane not a lane?

02 Mar 2010 Leave a Comment

by prem2pram in Lancashire Tags: House Numbers, Post Code, Postal Address, Postal Town, Roads and Highways, Skelmersdale, Up Holland, Upholland, Wigan, WN8

Q: When is Mill Lane not Mill Lane
A: When it’s Mayfield Road

Confused….. So is everyone else, if you look at the map below you can clearly see Mill Lane and Mayfield Road.

So if you were looking for either number two or four Mayfield Road common sense would suggest you turn into Mayfield Road! Correct?

No if you turn into Mayfield Road you will not find either number 2 or number 4 because numbers 2 and 4 Mayfield Road are actually on Mill Lane (see map below).

Just to further confuse everyone number 2 and 4 Mayfield Road, Up Holland are classed as being in Skelmersdale and yet they have a Wigan postcode.  Why?  As the village of Up Holland is listed as being under the township of Skelmersdale.  Yet the Postcode is WN8 as the postal town is Wigan.

Confused?

Well it gets even worse as there is a Mill Lane in Skelmersdale that is also a WN8 postcode.

Also there is a Mill Lane in the village of Appley Bridge which is a WN6 postcode, it is also only 3 miles away and causes confusion for couriers or visitors asking directions.

Although it is a Mill Road in Orrell, the road is actually situated within a few hundred yards of Up Holland High School.  The school is sited close to the borders with Orrell and Billinge it is more accurately described as in the hamlet of Tontine, which, is it self a suburb of the parish of Up Holland/ Upholland.

Now having just brought up another confusion for any humans trying to find our humble abode.  Why do I use two different ways of spelling Up Holland.  Well, in there infinite wisdom the powers that be decided a number of years ago that the village would be spelt one-way, and the ‘parish’ spelt the other way.  The reason given it would be the best solution to prevent confusion locally!  If this were the case then why do the signs as you coming off the motorway periodically change from one form of the spelling to the other?

All in; one might believe that living in a small village would render confusion over an address a figment of the householders, postal and courier delivery staff’s imagination; however, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Deliveries for 4 Mill Lane, Up Holland are occasionally delivered to 4 Mayfield Road, as all the access is via Mill Lane. Yet all the even numbers of Mill Lane are on the opposite side of the road and the houses directly above 2 and 4 Mayfield Road are 11 – 17 Mill Lane.  The house that is correctly addressed as 4 Mill Lane is approximately 300 yards away.  The local Chinese take away even confuses the two properties!  And they are only 100 yards beyond 4 Mill Lane and within the local parade of shops.

It makes one realise that the system of assigning numbers to the name of the streets as in American towns and cities is very logical and prevents such confusion over a properties ‘real’ location.  However, if we adopted their methods of addressing roads we might make the life of so many people that much easier but might we not just lose our right to moan and groan about the situation.  Might we not also lose some of our history, our eccentricities as a nation and lose the opportunities to poke fun at the way our own history makes our lives so unpredictable from one day to the next.

Long live the traditional British village, but please – can the local councils sort something out between themselves!

© Sue Edmondson of Prem2Pram